A guest with a nut allergy sits down at your table. They open the menu and look for information that has to be there. Allergens on the menu are not a detail, they are a legal duty and a matter of safety. Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 requires every food business to inform guests about 14 specific substances. According to figures cited by EFET, about 4.5 million people in the EU live with a food allergy.
The good news: correct labeling is not hard. It takes method, not effort. In this guide you get 7 practical steps, from the legal list to the inspection. And we show how a digital menu keeps allergens on the menu correct and up to date, with no reprints.
1. Learn the 14 allergens the law requires
The law leaves no room for interpretation. Regulation (EU) 1169/2011 defines 14 substances you must declare when they are present in a dish. Learn them well, because they hide in more recipes than you think.
- Gluten: wheat, rye, barley, oats and their products
- Crustaceans: shrimp, crab, lobster and their products
- Eggs and egg based products
- Fish and fish products
- Peanuts and peanut products
- Soybeans and soy products
- Milk, including lactose
- Tree nuts: almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews and more
- Celery and celery products
- Mustard and mustard products
- Sesame seeds and their products
- Sulphur dioxide and sulphites above set levels
- Lupin and lupin products
- Molluscs: mussels, snails, squid and their products
Gluten and milk appear almost everywhere. A simple dressing often hides mustard or celery, a dessert hides sesame. So the list is checked dish by dish, not by eye.
2. Map every dish in your kitchen
Take your menu and break each dish down into its ingredients. Next to every recipe, note which of the 14 allergens it contains. Do not rely on the cook's memory, put it on paper or on screen in a way that lasts.
Watch for cross contamination too. The same pan, the same knife, the same oil carry traces from dish to dish. If you cannot rule it out, declare it clearly. An honest note protects both the guest and you. Keep the list in a simple file that you update with every recipe change. That way you do not start from zero each season.
3. Choose a compliant way to display them
EFET gives you clear options. You are not required to write everything next to each dish, as long as the information reaches the guest in a documented way. According to the EFET circular, accepted methods are:
- Listing the allergens inside the price list or the menu itself
- A sign in a visible spot of the store, per type of food
- Printed or electronic material, directly available to the guest
The cleanest way is to put allergens on the menu, where the guest is already looking. That way the information is not lost on a wall sign, and does not depend on what the waiter remembers to say during the rush.
4. Keep allergens on the menu always up to date
The recipe changes, the allergen changes with it. You switch bread supplier, new gluten comes in. You add tahini to a dessert, sesame is now present. Every such change must reach the guest immediately.
This is where paper fails you. The printed menu stays frozen until the next print run, and meanwhile the information is wrong. With a digital menu you fix an entry in seconds, from your phone, with no new print shop invoice. The digital menu keeps the information correct every day, not just the day it was printed.
5. Speak your guests' language too
Autumn brings the second tourist peak and foreign guests with allergy questions. A German guest allergic to peanuts does not read «αραχίδες». If the information exists only in Greek, for them it does not exist at all.
A printed menu needs a separate edition per language, with double printing cost. The automatic translation of the digital menu shows the information in each guest's language, with no extra work. Safety should not stop at the border of language.
6. Train your staff to answer correctly
The written label is the base, not the end. The guest will ask, and the waiter must know the answer or where to find it. An «I think it does not» is not an acceptable answer when we talk about an allergy.
Show your team where to find the allergen list for each dish. With a digital menu they always have it on their phone, updated. Set a rule too: in any doubt, ask the kitchen before serving. The guest's peace of mind is worth ten seconds.
7. Be ready for the inspection
EFET inspects and samples. Every few weeks it announces recalls of products that do not correctly declare their allergens. Food service is not exempt from this attention.
So keep a file in order: allergen list per dish, the way you announce them, the date of the last update. A digital menu keeps this history on its own. When everything is recorded and up to date, the inspection becomes routine, not a nightmare. The inspector usually asks to see how you document the information. A clean, up to date list answers the question before it is even asked.
Compliance becomes an easy matter
Allergens on the menu are a duty, but also an opportunity for trust. The guest who finds clear, correct information feels safe and comes back. The 7 steps take a few hours of work and a solid base.
The digital menu makes the hard part easy: you update once, it applies everywhere and in every language. Set it up in 10 minutes and see Loudlink's plans and pricing, from 9 EUR per month billed annually. Give your guests one more reason to trust you.
